Iraq:Mortar bombs killed 15 people in a Sunni neighbourhood of Baghdad yesterday in fresh violence after a truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shia area on Saturday in the worst single atrocity since the US-led 2003 invasion.
The spiralling sectarian bloodshed threw the spotlight on prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's planned crackdown in Baghdad, but a US general warned that that this would not produce results overnight and said reinforcements were still being deployed.
American officers told a small group of foreign reporters that the US-Iraqi campaign to stabilise Baghdad would begin soon and said the offensive would be on a scale never seen in four years of war.
The mortar rounds crashed down in the northern Adhamiya district as clashes were reported between gunmen and police in the religiously-mixed Amil district. Details were sketchy, but Adhamiya is frequently subjected to mortar barrages.
More than 20 people were reported killed elsewhere in Baghdad in bomb attacks and drive-by shootings.
As pressure piled on Mr Maliki to halt a descent into all-out civil war, US military spokesman Maj-Gen William Caldwell urged patience. "It is important to acknowledge that it will not turn the security situation overnight," he said of the Baghdad security plan, which was announced in January.
"People must be patient. Give the government and coalition forces a chance to fully implement it. It will take some time for additional Iraqi and US forces to be deployed."
American colonels who are senior advisers to the Iraqi army and police in Baghdad said that a command centre overseeing the crackdown would be activated today.
"The expectation is that the plan will be implemented soon thereafter," Col Doug Heckman, senior adviser to the 6th Iraqi army division, said at a US military base in Baghdad.
"It's going to be an operation unlike anything this city has seen. It's a multiple order magnitude of difference, not just a 30 per cent. I mean a couple of hundred per cent," he added, referring to previous offensives which failed to stem the bloodshed.
Despite opposition from Democrats in control of Congress, President Bush has said he is sending 21,500 reinforcements, most earmarked for Baghdad, to stem sectarian violence between the majority Shia and once-dominant Sunnis.
A senior Shia official in Mr Maliki's government voiced frustration at the government's inability to curb the violence, which has claimed around 1,000 lives across Iraq in the past week. "People are getting fed up and very upset. They are asking for action from the government. They want an answer to these killings," he said.
Maj-Gen Caldwell repeated US accusations that Iran was supplying weapons to and training "extremist elements" in Iraq.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that half of the Sunni militants behind the bombings in Iraq had arrived through neighbouring Syria. US and Iraqi officials have long accused Iraq's neighbours of failing to stop militants from crossing into Iraq.
A bulldozer cleared debris and rescue workers picked through bloodstained rubble looking for more bodies after Saturday's deadly truck bomb attack. A suicide-bomber drove the truck, packed with explosives, into a crowded Baghdad market. More than 300 people were wounded.
Mr Maliki yesterday blamed the blast on supporters of Saddam Hussein and other Sunni militants and repeated his pledge to act firmly.
But patience is running thin among war-weary Iraqis. In Sadriya, Shias said that the Mehdi army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr should handle security, not government forces.
"We are fed up with the government falling short in protecting us. After four years, our blood still flows," said Abu Sajad (37), a resident of Sadriya.
Mass killings have reinforced perceptions among many of the Shia that militias such as the Mehdi army offer them the best protection against Sunni insurgents.
But the Pentagon has said that the Mehdi army poses a greater threat to peace in Iraq than al-Qaeda, and US commanders have urged Mr Maliki to move against it.
- (Reuters)